Vietnam's war

At Tay Ninh, a suburb of Ho Chi Minh City, 39km northwest, visitors come to see the Cu Chi Tunnels constructed and used by the Viet Cong during the war which, in Vietnam, is called the American War. This extensive network of over 300 kilometres included all facilities, allowing soldiers to live underground for long periods of time.

The Vietnamese people are fine-boned and it was only with difficulty that large western soldiers (or these days, tourists) can fit into the tiny and well-camouflaged holes and pass through the cramped tunnels. It's easy to gloss over the terror and danger of those years at war, but guides will share with visitors stories which are truly saddening.

Today you can take a boat down the Mekong river and be guided along small canals. Near Chau Doc, at Tuc Dup, close to the Cambodian border, is the site of what was a VC cave hideout almost thirty years ago. Now red flags with gold stars - Vietnam's flag - mark the grassed rocks and give the bouldery hillside the appearance of the world's most difficult golf course. Some caves have been peopled by wax figures of VC's defending their hideout, and a map in the garden cafe at the base shows what it must have been like with aircraft strafing the hillside, swooping helicopters, fires and unbelievable noise.

Today the scene is quiet, bucolic almost. The loudest sound is that of the whipper-snipper keeping the grounds in order. Visiting tourists can hire paddle boats on the minute lake, and bougainvillea and oleanders and tropical flowers now cover the scars of war.

Talk to the locals, and when you mention 'the war', they'll simply ask 'which war?'. Vietnam has for centuries been in the crosswires,mainly because this lazy S-shaped coastal strip that meanders over 3000 kilometres from its northern border with China is hugely desirable. Whole generations come and go, always under the threat of invasion, always fighting to survive.

And then you realize that last century's Vietnam War in the Mekong Delta, is the one that has been waged forever. The battle to stay alive and feed the family. To survive.

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